>> Thursday, September 01, 2011

Lots of ground covered in today's edition of the video. Please give it a look for some graphics to go along with today's discussion.

Meteorological Fall has arrived, but it will feel a bit more like Summer over the next few days. It won't be bad, and the humidity will be pretty low, but highs today will be in the upper 80s to near 90 with lower 90s tomorrow and Saturday.

A strong cold front will arrive by Monday, and ahead of that, some showers and storms will be possible in a limited fashion Sunday with some better chances Monday.

Much cooler air will arrive by Tuesday, and we could see some Piedmont highs shy of 80 in some spots with lows in the 50s by mid-week next week.

Tropics...

First off, Katia is a hurricane, and although it looks fairly ragged this morning, I expect a general strengthening trend in coming days. While a lot of modeling still suggests a turn north prior to impacting the US, I still don't think this is a lock, and I think all East Coast interests need to continue to closely monitor Katia.

In the Gulf, most modeling indicates that the tropical disturbance down that way will organize into Tropical Storm Lee over the next couple of days. This one will be a real forecast challenge as it will have very little steering currents working on it, so the system will tend to meander in the northern Gulf for a while.

Lots of rain will likely fall along the central Gulf coast, and some big flooding problems could develop there.

How much, if any, of that moisture gets pulled up our way remains a question mark.

Matthew, I've noticed earlier that more of the models were moving towards a further West solution. The GFS still had the thing going out to sea. Just wondering what your thoughts were on this thing now, or if they've changed?